Concentrating on Sri Lanka
(Name and A#)
Colonialism had long reaching effects on indigenous cultures, economic systems, literature, and religions. Of those four, religions were the most personal and the most stubborn to change. It was not until the late 18th and early 19th centuries that the British first contacted the Buddhist religion. For the British, it was a bit of a shock to find a civilization willing to accept their rule and yet, a religion so constant and resilient as to be able to reject Christianity while absorbing bits and pieces of the religion and the British culture into their own.
The British had a sense of superiority about them. “In a wider sense . . . the British, and characteristically European, attitude toward indigenous peoples, predicated on a strange blend of chauvinism, violent imperialism, and often misguided goodwill” (Hanson 303). British poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling said it best in his infamous poem “The White Man’s Burden” with a brief and aloof explanation of the Imperial British attitude, which was, ironically, to become a springboard for an emerging religious thought that found a welcome in the world. The poem summarizes the British effort of colonization during the whole of the 19th century. Kipling’s poem reads, in part:
Take up the White Man’s burden—
The savage wars of peace
Fill full the mouth of famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to naught. (Kipling 17–24)
Kipling’s vision of imperialism provides compelling insight into the assumptions and motivations underlying British colonization. Believing completely in the premise of the civilizing mission, the British imagined themselves as the bringers of progress to atavistic and degenerate peoples. In Kipling’s vision, colonized territories are defined as sites of disease and deprivation which the indigenous peoples are helpless to eradicate. It is this narrative of suffering both demands and authorizes intervention, without which the cycle of pain and death would not cease.
For British imperialists, the civilizing mission became a need for the perpetual stewardship for colonies. Thus, British holdings in Asia and Africa were assumed under the fabric of paternalism about which Kipling writes so well.
Within this paradigm, an intrinsic lack within the native peoples requires, condones, and demands the protection of the British colonizer. In an 1897 speech before the Royal Colonial Institute, Joseph Chamberlain asserts:
“In carrying out this work of civilization we are fulfilling what I believe to be our national mission, and we are finding scope for the exercise of these faculties and qualities which have made of us a great, governing race” (Chamberlain 2).
The unique capacities of these “great, governing” British, Chamberlain insists, have “brought security and peace and comparative prosperity to countries that never knew these blessings before” (Chamberlain 3).
In the case of Buddhism, it confused the British to see a religion with so many schools of thought, some adverse to others. However, the British government did not attempt to change beliefs themselves, but they did have effects on the mechanism of faith. With Buddhism, Christianity ran into a system of beliefs far beyond the scope of Christianity. Whereas Christianity involved the worship of a deity, Buddhism involved the belief in a system of thought. “With the Buddha there was nothing permanent, and all was change, and all change and impermanence was sorrow” (Dasgupta 111). Along with the concept of change being the only permanent concept in Buddhism came the inevitability of changing religious formats from culture to culture and nation to nation. Since different nations housed different cultures, it is logical to assume that the gradual incorporation of Buddhism into a nation/culture would include a different application of the religion itself within that nation/culture. It is this difference that was to boggle the British administrators. There was no pattern with which to govern Buddhist cultures as each culture was different within itself and reacted to the British in a variety of ways. To the Buddhist, “change” was a prime piece of life. However, change that involved the removal of the responsibilities and prerogatives of religion was not change; it was destruction unless that change could be controlled to become an attribute.
It was the British who had the most exposure to the Buddhist religion, and yet it was the British who most misunderstood the complexities and ramifications inherent within that religion. Sri Lanka is a sterling example of how the British outwardly affected the Buddhist religion and yet did not understand what those effects would accomplish.
In Sri Lanka, the Buddhist religion had taken a different course than the one which the British were familiar with from their exposure in India. The Sangha, the Buddhist monk community, normally trod the path of enlightenment and thus could not be hampered by the worldly concepts of property or ownership. It was their path to become enlightened and to enlighten others through the path of suffering as recognized by Buddha as the only correct path. “Their rule forbids them to assume other religious roles and other worldly occupation” (Gombrich and Obeyesekere 43). However, in Sri Lanka, the role of the Sangha had evolved in a different direction. Relics of the Buddha had been given to the Sri Lankan King by the Indian ruler Ashoka early in the 1st Century. Chief among these relics was a tooth of Buddha. Holding possession of the relics placed the King of Sri Lanka at the head of the Sangha (Phadnis 8). Thus, the Sri Lankan King was able to act as the Buddha in regards to control of the Sangha (Ganawardara 175). Conversely, the Kingship of Sri Lanka was bestowed by the Sangha (Ganawardara 175). Thus, the power of the Sanga laid in the hands of a King that was placed in the kingship through the Sangha itself. This circular movement of authority caused some consternation between the King and the Sangha. Compromises were made involving the use of that power and the holding of certain values resident within the creation of the Sangha. Sri Lankan Buddhism changed with the “initial and constant royal patronage” (Phadnis 42). The resulting Sangha ownership of land ran contrary to the teachings of Buddha and the early Indian Buddhists (Phadnis 42). More often than not, with the passing of ages, the Sangha became attached to the landholding class as those who were elected to the Sangha membership were more and more often from that class. Family affiliations came to be more important than the path of enlightenment, and the Sangha became “very much tied to the land-holding class, which also goes against the supposed breakdown of caste distinctions of early Indian Buddhism” (Phadnis 40).
Thus, at the time that the British took over the Island nation of Sri Lanka, there was already an element of change resident within the political and economic makeup of the Buddhist religion as it existed in Sri Lanka. Taking over from the Dutch, who had taken over from the Portuguese in turn, the British, at first, wanted to use the Island of Sri Lanka as a military base from which to fight the French, who had become more aggressive in the Asian theater. After the Treaty of Ghent, the French were no longer a threat beyond the Southeast Asian territories they had already colonized. With that realization, the British became more interested in Sri Lanka as a colony than a military base.
The British had assumed that there would be a system of laws in place with which to deal with the indigenous population. No such codification existed. Undismayed, the British began setting up a system of statutes and civil service personnel to administer them. The Sangha had less problem with these laws than with the concept of the British as rulers of the Kingdom. By politically controlling the island, the British had succeeded in one action to “destroy the Sangha’s social function as the educator of the peasantry and the link between the Sangha and the King” (Derrett 290). According to the original agreement between Sri Lanka and the British, called the Landian Commission of 1815, “the Religion of Boodhoo professed by the Chiefs and the Inhabitants of the Provinces is declared inviolable, and its Rites, Ministers and Places of worship are to be maintained and protected” (Houtart 178). To the British, this meant that they would respect the personages, the rituals and the buildings of the Buddhists. To the Sri Lankan Buddhists, however, the article of agreement indicated that the practices which the Sangha had come to expect under the auspices of the King would continue; that there would continue to be a “maintenance of a certain orthodox interpretation of (Buddhist) Dharma, the appointments of religious authorities, the guarding of the tooth relic and the patronage of the temple schools” (Houtart 181). The whole thing came to a climax when British missionaries attempted to erect British schools and force youths to attend them. After a riot, the British authorities surrendered and made further guarantees to the Sangha, even to the point of relinquishing any power to tax Sangha lands. The Anglican churches were dismantled and the Buddhist ceremonies, parades, religious rites, etc., were all verified as essential parts of the Sri Lanka culture.
The Buddhist establishment’s victory was short lived as the British began to exploit its colonies for economic gain methodically. New plantations were organized, dispensing with the old farm policies, and crops were ordered that were new to the economy of Sri Lanka. The lands of the Sangha were subject to this requirement, though not taxed, the crops were subject to a quota system. The Sangha negotiated the return of their religious relics, including the tooth of Buddha, to their control from the British as a recompense for the new economic climate. Their religious foundations once again on firm footing, the Sanga paused to consider the British.
The British, on the other hand, were still interested in the education of the Sri Lankans. With control of the economy came the need for social mobility of the indigenous population, and that required education. Though the British government professed indifference regarding the expansion of Christianity, the practice of utilizing English missionaries for the instruction of the English language actually put into place a system of proselytization throughout all the colonies including Sri Lanka. The British government established rules that required a demonstrable mastery of English as a prerequisite for any social advancement for a member of the Sri Lankan citizenry. Thus, even though the British were outwardly relieved of the distinction of religious conversion of the Buddhists, they were, at the same moment, using “a host of missionary agents” (Wickremeratne 16) to accomplish the same thing within the economic sphere. It was a balancing act that was to inspire a fundamental change in the Buddhist religion; a change that was encouraged by the teachings of Buddha but that had become mired over the centuries in the political application of Buddhism for the material benefit of the Buddhist Sangha (Wickremeratne 86).
A rash of aggressive educational techniques came into play as select Buddhists began to retaliate against the Christian pervasive influence within the Sri Lankan social construct. The principle advantages the Buddhists enjoyed was the thick foundation of belief that permeated the society. They also had the advantage of the written word. Buddhism had no real written forms of its relevant parameters available for the general public. It had always been the duty of the Sanga to educate the masses through an oral tradition and by example. The life of piety was an exalted life to which all peasantry aspired. The concept of change from one life to another, of the reward generated by the living of an exemplary life in whatever social form that life may presently take, led to a general placidity among the population. When the Christian missionaries began using their economic superiority to advance the Christian life as beneficial, the Buddhist activists simply began printing and distributing sections of the Christian Bible in refutation, latching onto the Old Testament image of “a jealous vengeful god to please whom a man might be prepared to offer his own son in sacrifice” (Wickremeratne 231). The Sangha recognize the British political maneuvering as a separation of British action from British religion. After centuries of using the moral circle to include all sections of life as a part and parcel of the Buddhist religion, the dichotomy of British colonization seemed to them to be “a form of moral alienation” (Wickremeratne 231). To the Buddhist, splitting one part of life from another could not be done. Observing what they could from the British administrators and the missionaries, the Buddhists started reading British articles from sources in England. To them, the arguments represented there indicated a deep division within the British social construct. The Buddhists noticed how Christianity was more interested in the use of secularism than religion to spread its word, how science seemed to win every argument rather than the use of logical paradigms, and how “major Western thinkers preferred Buddhism over Christianity” (Wickremeratne 232). Some in the Sangha began to believe that it was the Buddhists that should engage in converting Christians rather than the Christians converting Buddhists.
Slowly, the wheels of Buddhism began to grind. Educated British, such as Thomas W. Rhys Davids, began to speak openly about the benefits of the Buddhist religion. After speaking had come the written word and arguments began to fly through London on the virtues of each religion. Rhys Davids became very influential. He was the first to write about the Buddhist faith. His was writing that could be read by both a European audience and by the young Buddhists students emerging from the English lessons provided by the British missionaries. The Sangha of Sri Lanka began to encourage the young to attend British schools to learn to read and write the English language for the purpose of learning and assimilating British literature and thought.
For the Buddhist religion, this was a new tactic, one that utilized the long established belief system and wielded it amongst its audience through a new method brought to them by their British conquerors. The Sanga had awakened from a slumberous regimen of slogging through life, repeating the same words to different audiences day after day to discover that they could reach farther, reason deeper, and convince easier through the use of the written word by utilizing the cheap mechanism of the printing press. And what was more beneficial was that they could, through a simple process of encouragement, have the British do it themselves.
As time passed, the Buddhist movement grew, and other scholars came to Sri Lanka. An American, Henry S, Olcott, entered the scene and changed, to the delight of the fundamental Buddhists who looked for change as the principle aspect of life, the focus once again. Where Rhys Davids had portrayed Buddhism as a pure religion of essential ethical development, Olcott equated Buddhism with all other religions as they all “had an esoteric content” (Prothero 14). He also surmised that the ideas of Buddha came from the Aryan race. This change from what had long been recognized as an Oriental religion to a religion that incorporated the aspects of all other beliefs and may indeed have originated from a non-oriental people provided the world-wide legitimacy that Buddhism needed.
After Olcott, there was an immense effort to expand Buddhism into other parts of the world. Indeed, there have been conferences in several fields to which Buddhist philosophers and scientists have been invited. In 1893 Dharmapala, a well-known Buddhist scholar and student and follower of Olcott was asked to speak at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Dharmapala was already known as an influential speaker for Buddhism; a religion noted for its “resistance to Christian missionary efforts and its appropriation of themes and values derived from Protestant Christianity” (Gombrich and Obeyesekere, 202). Though uncomfortable for the Christians around the room, Dharmapala opened his comments by asserting that there is no “Supreme being” there is only evolution:
“The teaching of the Buddha on evolution are clear and expansive. We are asked to look on the Cosmos ‘as a continuous process unfolding itself in regular order in obedience to natural laws.’ We see in it all not a yawning chaos restrained by the constant interference from without of a wise and beneficent external power, but a vast aggregate of original elements perpetually working out their own fresh redistribution in accordance with their own inherent energies. He regards the cosmos as an almost infinite collection of material, animated by an almost infinite sum of total energy” (Dharmapala 9).
The effect of Dharmapala’s statement was to put the Rudyard Kipling image of British colonialism as a benefit for those primitive and ineffective cultures on its head. The British colonial tactics in Sri Lanka had freed the Sangha Buddhist intellect from its daily burden just long enough to allow it to expand its duties to include the education of others outside the Buddhist religion, thus allowing for a new course in Sangha teachings.
In attempting to suppress and convert the knowledgeable Buddhist, the British had opened the door to an expanding world where thoughts of the path toward peace could gain a foothold in the world of conflict. Without the British air of superiority, the reflective Buddhist religion would have continued to enjoy its submissive existence. Now, the world was ready for a new view of the reason for life, and the British were the custodians who held the door ajar.
Works Cited
Chamberlain, Joseph. “The True Conception of Empire.” The Annual Royal Colonial Institute Dinner. Hotel Metropole, 31 March 1897. Address.
Dasgupta, Surendranath. A History of Indian Philosophy: Vol 1. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1991. Gutenberg Press. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.
Derret, J. Duncan M. Religion, Law and the State in India. London: Faber & Faber, 1968. Gutenerg Press. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.
Dharmapala, Angorika. "Return to Righteousness, a Collection of Speeches, Essays, and Letters of the Anagarika Dharmapala." (Book, 1965).Government Press, n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.
Gombrich, Richard F., and Gananath Obeyesekere. Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1988. Gutenberg Press. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.
Guṇavardhana, Raṇavīra. Robe and Plough: Monasticism and Economic Interest in Early Medieval Sri Lanka. Tucson: Published for the Association for Asian Studies by U of Arizona, 1979. Gutenberg Press. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.
Hanson, Victor Davis. Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. New York: Doubleday, 2001. Print.
Houtart, François. Religion and Ideology in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Hansa, 1974. Print.
Kipling, Rudyard. “The White Man’s Burden.” Modern History Sourcebook.Fordham U, 1997. Web. 5 July 2013.
Phadnis, Urmila. Religion and Politics in Sri Lanka. Columbia, MO: South Asia, 1976. Gutenberg Press. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.
Prothero, Stephen R. The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996. Print.
Wickremeratne, Ananda. Buddhism and Ethnicity in Sri Lanka: A Historical Analysis. New Delhi: International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy, 1996. Gutenberg Press. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.
